The Clock That Wept At Midnight

The clock stood at the heart of the old cathedral,
tall as a tower, carved in dark wood.
Its face was cracked, its hands stiff,
and no one remembered who built it.
At midnight, it did not chime.
It wept. Soft drops, like tears,
fell from behind the glass,
sinking into the stone below.


No one dared stay past dusk.
Even the priests locked the doors early.
They said the clock held sorrow,
the kind that sticks to your soul.
But Ellis, wild-eyed and curious,
had never met a rule he wouldn’t test.
He slipped into the cathedral one night,
when the sky was heavy with silence.


The air inside was colder than outside.
The statues looked different in the dark
like they were waiting.
Dust floated like ash in the candlelight.
Ellis walked slowly to the clock,
his footsteps swallowed by the stone.
The clock did not move,
but something inside it breathed.


At midnight, the sound began
not a chime, not a bell,
but a low, broken sob.
It filled the cathedral like smoke,
curling around pillars,
settling into Ellis’s bones.
Then he saw it:
a single tear sliding down the glass.


He leaned closer.
There was a figure inside the clock,
small and hunched,
with hands pressed to the inner glass.
It looked like a child,
but its eyes were older than time.
It whispered, though no mouth moved,
and Ellis could somehow hear it.


“Time is stolen here,” it said.
“One minute from each soul who hears me.
A minute they’ll never live.
I take it gently—
a breath, a blink,
a chance not taken.
No one misses it
until it’s far too late.”


Ellis stepped back,
but the clock’s hands twitched.
The door behind him was gone.
The stained glass wept blood.
The floor seemed deeper,
like it could swallow thought.
And the voice, now louder, said,
“You wanted to know. Stay, and you will.”


He screamed,
but the sound didn’t move.
It hung in the air,
frozen like the clock’s hands.
The sobbing grew louder,
not from the clock—but from him.
A minute left him,
and he felt it go, like warmth from skin.


When the priests came at dawn,
they found Ellis asleep on the floor.
Older, somehow.
Tired in a way no child should be.
He never spoke of that night.
He never went near the clock again.
But each day,
he moved a little slower.